Email me at jamie.kaitlyn.earnest@gmail.com for access to available work, commissions, requests or inquiries.
Jamie Earnest is from Alabama and holds a BFA in Painting from Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art. She received of the Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship to attend the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art during summer 2015. In 2016, her work was featured at The Andy Warhol Museum. Jamie had her debut solo exhibition at Cindy Lisica Gallery in Houston in 2016. Since then, she has had an additional three solo exhibitions of her work in Alabama and Pennsylvania. She has shown multiple group shows in Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Texas, Colorado, Alabama and Suzhou, China. In 2019, she received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and was accepted to the Brewhouse Distillery Emerging Artist Residency for 2019-2020. In 2020, Jamie began participating in TWIRL: A Decade of Artist Interviews where she will be interviewed for the magazine once a year for ten years to reflect on her practice. She’s passionate about engaging in the local arts community through her jobs, supporting artists, and speaking about the importance of art in our society. Jamie is a nice southern girl with a big heart currently working in Pittsburgh, PA.
Southern hospitality – the stereotype of southerners being warm, caring, and welcoming of others seems to imply and evoke the nature of altruism – the practice of selfless concern for the well-being of others . This conviction of virtues was adhered to my southern upbringing by my mother. Yet, there existed deep gaps between how I was taught to implement this hospitality and how southern hospitality was actually being practiced around me.
My work aims to examine the contrasts of altruism and polarization in the south. From ideas of southern superstitions to the communal value of food, to the values of religion and family, these works take recognizable, domestic symbols and tie them together with dark realms of the uncanny. Though these are enticing and familiar painting and objects, something eerie exists in each of them – this is the uneasy, the learned fear, and the judgement that influences the true nature of ‘hospitality’ in the south.